RC 216: Pop Is Dead 1 – Radio Musicola

I started the Pop Is Dead mix back in 2004 or 2005 – yes 7 or 8 years in the making! Finally got round to doing it, and I’ve collected so many songs about the music industry that I decided to do a series of shows about the State of the Music Industry – starting with my favourite subject: radio and especially the dumbing down and computerised playlists of music stations. Starting with the commercial and local stations in the 70’s and 80’s was the rise of the playlist and the DJ not having track selection choice.

Now in the digital age we have the same repetitive stale format being copied endlessly by corporate megaliths and the music being as disposable as the products advertised between the songs, safe ‘classics’ and golden oldies, inane chatter and local radio blether.

And sadly it’s spread to the non-commercial BBC stations so Radio 1, 2 et al are also playlist/genre crazy and ruled by producers and committee. The last of the truly freeform DJs are being sacked, have died or are on digital stations or relegated to very late night on public broadcasters who have to have the odd token cred DJ – John Peel would spin in his grave. And sadly the music industry is complicit – feeding lazy X-Factor slush and corporate blandie to these playlists. Radio 1 originally and 1Xtra now might exist to provide an alternative to the pirates, but really it mostly doesn’t cut it.

So here’s an audio fight back against the playlist and dumb music radio programming (this is why the podcast is called Radio Clash – did you guess?) with a lot of interruptions from bad commercials, subverted jingles, George Carlin, Victor Lewis Smith, Whispering Bob Harris, Chris Morris and loads of hiss…